


connect the dots from here to you

by orphan_account



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-19
Updated: 2013-07-19
Packaged: 2017-12-20 18:13:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/890301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's their first new planet on the five year mission and the universe just doesn't want to cut them a break. It turns out it's harder than anyone thought to go where no one has gone before. Served with a side of Motherfucking Protein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	connect the dots from here to you

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for STXII. Title taken from the Snow Patrol song.

Jim claps Sulu on the back. His good spirits are practically contagious. Everyone on the bridge is smiling with him. Even Leonard feels something like excitement jumping up in the back of his throat, though that might just be space madness finally cropping up. Maybe he needs a check-up. But even Spock looks practically jolly as he descends from his science station and goes to join Jim at the front of the bridge.

“We made it,” Jim says softly, but his voice carries across the whole bridge as if the incessant beeping and whining of the computers have hushed for this moment. “We’re here where no one has ever been before.” Jim’s eyes feast on the scene before them, a new solar system that no one has ventured to. They have worked tirelessly to get here. Have lost too many of their own to monsters and madmen. But finally they’re here. It is so far from home that something in Leonard wonders how they’ll ever get back.

“Although we know that none of the planets have yet to produce any civilizations, the possibility still remains that there may have been other sentient beings to come here before us that we do not know of,” Spock tells Jim. At this, Leonard can’t help an amused twist of his lips. Leave it to Spock to give Jim a slap of reality.

Jim doesn’t find it so amusing. He groans, twisting to look at Spock with a look of exasperation. “Fine then,” he says. “We’re here where no one has ever been before _that we know of_. Better?”

“It doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, sir,” Sulu says, eyes laughing. He and Chekov trade amused looks.

Spock says nothing, just does that smug eyebrow raise that he does where no one can tell if he’s being serious or just messing with Jim. Leonard’s still not sure what the consensus is on that, if Vulcans are actually capable of teasing or not. He’ll have to ask Nyota later. She is standing behind him, one hand still poised above her station, taking in the view like everyone else.

Leonard thinks what a strange thing it is that they’re all so different but can still be struck silent by the idea of final frontiers. He guesses it has something to do with human nature. He’s not sure what Spock’s excuse is.

Sulu has pulled them to a stop outside the solar system as Jim has ordered, and the solar system’s star, Alpha Demetrius, shines bright. It is still barely more than a pinprick of light, and if Leonard lifted a thumb and closed one eye, he’d blot it out entirely, but they are still the first ones ever to be this close.

“Four planets in this solar system that are M-class,” Jim says, even though everyone here has already read the reports and readings. “Which one should we go to first, Mr. Spock?” Jim asks with carefree abandon. He fits the role of an intrepid explorer so well that, in another age, Leonard thinks Jim could have worn a tricorn hat and sailed the ocean blue.

“Might I suggest Demetrius III?” Spock asks placidly.

“Demetrius III?” Jim repeats. “Slightly smaller than Earth, two moons, mostly wetland-type biomes, right? Why that one?”

“It is the closest,” Spock replies.

Jim rolls his eyes. “Spock, don’t you have a sense of adventure? We’re in a _starship_. The Enterprise could take us to any of these planets in almost the same amount of time.”

Spock raises an eyebrow. “Might I remind you that our engines have been experiencing difficulties and are not operating at maximum capacity? Perhaps it would be better not to test them while maintenance is still underway.”

Jim makes a face. “How logical, Mr. Spock. Okay then Sulu, direct our course to Demetrius III. Warp factor six.”

The ship goes into motion and Jim goes back to his chair. He throws a look of pure delight at Leonard, who in turn throws a silent prayer to any god that is listening.

“Scotty, how’s my ship?” Jim asks into the intercom.

“She’s not running at full optimum level, sir, but it should be nothing,” Scotty says.

“Still don’t know what it is?”

“No. My best guess is that one of the circuits is malfunctioning and giving off an interference pattern but we haven’t found it. Yet,” Scotty adds.

“Keep looking then,” Jim says.

And pretty soon they are knee-deep in new planet. Literally. Leonard is up to his knees in goddamn _mud_.

* * *

Alien mud is just as uncomfortable as the mud back home, which is not the comfort Leonard wishes it could be. The protective suits that they are wearing keep them from making any direct contact with the mud, but he can still hear the thick, wet noises when he moves.

“Isn’t this fun?” Jim says, slightly breathless. He has been running through the knee-deep mud, overseeing their small team of science officers with vigorous excitement. The good thing about this is that it has forced Spock to continuously run after Jim to make sure that he isn’t upsetting any delicate ecosystem in his wake. Privately, Leonard thinks it’s a little late for that. Delicate scientific procedures, meet Jim Kirk. But it sure is entertaining to watch a Vulcan run through mud after an overexcited human.

“This is the last thing I’d consider fun. Remind me again why I’m down here? I didn’t hear you that well the first time when you practically kidnapped me and took me to the transporter room,” Leonard says, bending over as much as he can without losing his balance in order to examine one of the plants growing in the marshes.

“You know why. These plants have never been catalogued before. They could be cures to diseases waiting to be discovered,” Jim says. Even without looking up, Leonard knows that Jim is watching him work.

“Don’t get too excited,” he grumbles, half-sure that he’s been saying that to Jim since day one of the mission.

“Captain, I believe we only have 5.21 minutes until night falls. We should beam back up to the ship. We have taken enough samples to get started on analysis,” Spock says.

“No, I want to stay until after night falls,” Jim insists.

“The light here leaves very quickly,” Spock cautions. “It might be dangerous on unfamiliar terrain.”

“Unfamiliar terrain? Everything here is unfamiliar. There’s not really any point of reference for familiarity anymore,” Jim says, making it sound like it’s the greatest thing in the world to not have a clue what anything is. “We’ll be fine. I want to see night on a new planet.”

Spock gives in, probably seeing what Leonard sees: Jim is one stubborn son of a bitch.

Night does fall fast. Light leaves them so quickly that it feels like someone is turning down the lights. The rest of the science team has already beamed up, taking the samples straight to the labs of the Enterprise. By unspoken agreement, Spock and Leonard remain by Jim. They’re the ones who have the qualifications, the ones that Starfleet will never recognize: Certified Jim Kirk Babysitters.

“The stars are out,” Jim says finally after long minutes of silence. Spock and Leonard meet eyes for a brief moment before looking up at the sky. The stars don’t look real to Leonard, and he realizes that he’s not used to seeing them as a two-dimensional expanse anymore. The thought makes him feel lonely, and he draws closer to the other two until the three of them stand shoulder to shoulder under the starry sky.

Jim continues to speak. “We’re the first ones to see this sky, and these stars laid out just so.” Spock shifts slightly, making a wet squelching noise in the mud. “The first ones that we know of,” Jim amends for his sake.

“These are the same stars that we see every day aboard the Enterprise,” Spock says.

“I know. It’s not logical. They just look different from down here. Maybe I remember how small I am.”

“We’re not the small ones,” Leonard says as they begin to make their way back to the transport point. “The universe is just too damn big.”

Jim begins to say something but suddenly he is not there. With a spectacular splash of mud he lands face first into the ground.

“What the hell?” Jim splutters, wiping mud off of his protective face shield. “I tripped over something hard.”

Leonard begins to laugh, quietly at first but it grows in intensity until he is bent over, hands on his knees. Jim pushes himself up to glare at him petulantly. Spock helps him upright, the thin press of his lips the only indication that he finds this amusing.

“It felt like a rock,” Jim says, ignoring Leonard’s laughter and pushing mud around in search of the object he tripped on. With some digging he uncovers something that looks like a smooth stone. Jim hesitates, then strips off his suit’s gauntlet, going over the muddy stone with his bare fingers.

Leonard’s laughter quickly dies. “Jim, put your damn glove back on. Who knows what kinds of things are swimming in this mud?”

“It’s a tablet or something. I… Bones, I think there’s something carved into it,” Jim says excitedly.

Without a word, Spock kneels beside him and strips his glove off as well to examine the stone.

“Lord give me strength,” Leonard mutters, watching the two of them work with mingled horror and curiosity.

“There is writing,” Spock confirms, his more sensitive Vulcan fingertips finding the grooves that Jim’s could not. “It is difficult to tell in the dark, but someone _has_ deliberately carved something into this stone.”

Jim whistles, low and soft. When his eyes find Leonard’s, they are wide and bright blue in the starlight. “Well, what do you know? We’re not the first ones here after all.”

* * *

Although it is night on the planet, on the Enterprise their shift has just begun. It’s disorienting and Leonard hates it, like he hates basically everything that reminds him that he’s very far from home. And he hates how his body has already become accustomed to the schedule, like it has betrayed him somehow. The schedule also means that once they beam back up to the ship, Jim and Spock automatically begin to make their way up to the bridge.

“Oh no you don’t,” Leonard growls, seizing both of them by the backs of their shirts. “I have to make sure you didn’t pick up something deadly when you decided to make mud cakes on an alien planet.”

“Mud cakes? Doctor, I assure you—”

“Shut up Spock,” Leonard interrupts, and begins to drag them to sickbay.

“Ow! Bones, let go. I can walk, you know,” Jim says, twisting out of his grasp. Spock, too, stiffens in Leonard’s grip, becoming something like a six-foot Vulcan statue so that he has no choice but to release him. Infants, the both of them.

They make it to sickbay, where Leonard immediately forces Spock and Jim into the sonic showers so that they’re no longer covered in mud. They come back, with skin a bit more flushed and hair a bit fluffier. Both of them are pouting spectacularly, which for Spock means he’s hunched over on the biobed where he’s sitting, face even more blank than usual. For Jim it means that he won’t _shut up_.

Somehow he manages to scan the both of them.

“Like I thought,” he says, frowning down at the readings. “There were parasites in that mud. They’ve gotten into your bloodstream.”

He takes blood samples to send to the lab so he can start synthesizing a compound that will take out the parasites. As he does so, Jim talks to Spock excitedly about what they have found. He’s all wide eyes and broad gestures, and Spock listens with a contrastive stillness that still manages to be animated, in a way that Leonard has only happen seen around Jim and Nyota.

If Spock is ever that way with him as well, Leonard hasn’t noticed it yet. Jim told him once that Spock really did like him. Leonard had stared at Jim in disbelief before swatting the side of his head.

But he’s happy that Jim has found more people to lean on. Both Spock and Jim seem to be grasping for something desperately here amongst the stars. And it’s _Leonard’s_ job to make sure they both don’t bite the dust in the meantime. At least he has Nyota to help him.

“We should tell Uhura about the tablet, you know, I bet she’ll love it,” Jim says, practically thrumming with energy. He only stills when Leonard settles a hand on his arm and goes to draw his blood, like he instinctively knows that moving just makes it hurt more. Spock nods his agreement to the proposal, and at Jim’s insistence goes to the intercom to tell Nyota what they have found.

She comes down a mere minute later, out of breath from running.

“Hey!” Leonard protests as Nyota shoots past, skirting dangerously close to the box of vials he is carrying. He’s never seen anyone move as fast as she does. The crew of the Enterprise has learned to move to the side when they see her running.

Before he can say anything she has seated herself on the biobed where Spock and Jim are sitting waiting for their treatment, legs tucked underneath her, and proceeds to quiz them on what they have found. Leonard listens with half an ear as he works on putting together a formula. Thankfully the parasites are nothing too foreign from what he’s learned in his xenobiology courses.

Still, it’s an intimidating feat to take on, to perfect a medicine against something that no one else has ever encountered. He supposes that medical breakthroughs will become the norm, especially with this foolhardy crew of theirs.

These are Leonard’s thoughts as he finally distributes the cure, which probably explains why he gives it to Jim and Spock with slightly more force than necessary (Spock hunches forward even more sullenly and Jim yelps so loudly that a nurse is startled on the other side of sickbay).

“Am I in the way?” Nyota asks, an apology in her voice. She has made herself comfortable, kicking off her boots and inching her toes underneath Spock’s thigh as she asks Jim questions.

“No, you’re good,” Bones says gruffly, checking Jim and Spock with his tricorders to make sure the compound is working properly, even though he has already tested it on their blood samples. He’s actually grateful that Nyota is here. She is an effective distraction for Jim and Spock. If they hadn’t been engaged in conversation with her all this time, they would have probably attempted to go back to the bridge already. He wonders if Nyota is aware of this.

Knowing her, she probably is.

* * *

The next day, the mud around the tablet is efficiently cleared enough for the tablet to be fully revealed. It has been carefully dug out of the ground where it was planted. The surface of it is covered in neat lines of a foreign script. A team of xenolinguists headed by Uhura are crowded around the tablet, eagerly taking pictures and readings.

A light rain falls on the proceedings but it does nothing to dampen everyone’s spirits. Jim is actually surprised they aren’t throwing a party out of here, that’s how light the mood is. He supposes the festivities will be later, after they all aren’t costumed in mud suits.

“The thing is ancient. A thousand years old at least,” Uhura tells Jim when he comes to check on their progress. When he had told her about what they had found, her face had lit up like it was Christmas. Now she is contained and efficient once again. The only sign of her excitement is how she’s talking slightly faster than usual.

“Any chance of deciphering what it says?” Jim asks.

“Just give me a couple hours,” she says confidently, and goes to join the other xenolinguists by the tablet.

* * *

After checking up on Uhura, Jim goes up to the ship to Engineering. Scotty still hasn’t found the cause of the interference that’s been messing with the engines. The crew down in Engineering is in an entirely different mood than the xenolinguists down on Demetrius III. They are short-tempered and frustrated, trying to track down a problem that remains elusive.

“I don’t understand,” Scotty says. He is leaning over one of the computers, going over scans of the engine rooms. “I thought perhaps the interference pattern may have something to do with the space we’re in, some kind of environmental disturbance since it really only started when we came into the solar system. But from what I’m seeing here, it’s only a specific part of the engines that’s being affected.”

“Isn’t that good?” Jim asks. “You can pinpoint it and track it down, right?”

“Yes, I’ll try but… Captain, I think it’s _moving_.”

* * *

Nyota goes over to Spock’s station. He looks up at her when she approaches. She crosses her arms and leans against the wall, not saying anything for a few moments. She seems upset, but Spock knows from experience to let her talk in her own time.

“We got it translated,” she says finally, saying this as if it pains her. Spock reflects for yet another time how confusing humans are.

“And it’s complete gibberish,” she says. “Just a random sequence of numbers and letters. Our whole team went over it again, but I don’t think we missed anything.” She sighs.

Spock does not say anything. Nyota has said that he is a good listener, although he’s not quite sure what that means.

“It’s funny,” she says slowly, “but for some reason the sequence seemed kind of familiar.”

Spock lifts an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Look at this last line at the bottom,” Nyota says, taking out her PADD and showing him what she has translated. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was a signature the way it’s positioned at the bottom and slightly to the side. If I could just get that part translated, we could learn something about who wrote this in the first place. It’s just some random numbers but the pattern of it seems familiar.”

She gasps suddenly and jumps up, running to the other side of the bridge to her station, hair streaming behind her like a dark banner. Spock gets up and follows her. She is working at something on the computer, typing in things so quickly that it takes Spock a while to realize what she is doing.

“You are applying a Starfleet decoder key,” he says.

“The writing on the tablet is in code,” Nyota breathes. “A _Starfleet_ code.”

Once she knows the code she is able to decipher the last line. _Leonard McCoy_.

* * *

Jim is up to his elbows in circuits, perched high in a Jefferies tube. This is where Scotty had tracked down the interference, but according to him, it has already moved, appearing again on the other side of Engineering, a full three minute run away.

He and Scotty examine the circuits where the interference _had_ been.

“It’s no use, Captain,” Scotty says. “There’s no trace of it here. These circuits are working perfectly fine now. There’s no way to tell what caused them to malfunction.”

“What’s the size of it? The range of interference?” Jim asks him as he levers himself out of the Jefferies tube.

“About four feet in length, and almost a foot wide. Definitely a vague sort of rectangular shape, and always those dimensions,” Scotty says, looking down at his PADD for confirmation.

“Well there’s got to be a way to corner it and keep it from moving. We’ll spread out a grid pattern of engineers, pin it down.”

Scotty grins. “Aye sir, that might work.”

They assemble as many engineers as can be spared without the ship falling out of orbit. The team spreads out across Engineering, each member stationed strategically around the deck. Wherever the interference crops up again, someone will be there to pin it down.

Jim crouches at the mouth of a Jefferies tube, ready to run once Scotty finds the interference. This part of the deck is deserted, and nothing but the soft hum of the ship can be heard. Jim closes his eyes and listens to it.

His communicator chirps and Jim’s eyes fly open. “Where is it?” he asks.

“It’s not far from where you are,” Scotty says, sounding as if he’s still working on pinpointing its exact location. Jim hears him suck in a breath. “Captain, it’s at the matter-antimatter integrator circuits. If it fools around with those, we could all be blown to bits. You have to get to it fast. I’ll be there as quick as I can. Scott out.”

Jim peers down at his PADD where Scotty has sent him the location. He curses. The quickest way there is to climb up vertically through the Jefferies tube rather than go around to the turbolifts, and he knows he only has a few minutes before the interference moves somewhere else, where they’ll have to track it down all over again. He carries the PADD in his mouth to keep his hands free and begins to climb.

He’s not sure what he’s going to do when he gets to where the interference is, but he supposes he’ll have to figure that out when he gets there. He can already hear Bones’s voice in his head telling him to think before leaping. He’ll just have to do that another day.

The tubes that run through the Enterprise go on forever, running through the entire Engineering deck like veins. Jim’s arms are beginning to tire. Maybe a year or two ago he could have done this without breaking a sweat, back when he was still a cadet. But ever since he woke up in that hospital bed in San Francisco, surprised to find himself still breathing, he’s been weaker, without as much muscle mass. It’s been slow building it back up when there’s so much that he needs to do.

When he finally gets up to the level that he needs to, he’s breathing hard, arms sore, but he pushes himself up and glances down at the PADD. Then he looks up, finding the right panel. It is hot to the touch.

“Shit, it’s overheating.” Jim puts the PADD down and begins to pry the panel loose with the tools he swiped off of one of his engineer’s belts. He works the metal casing off and sets it on the floor, peering inside at the web of circuits. He blinks, rubs at his eyes, looks again. He can see the shimmering outline of the affected area where the interference is disrupting the integrator.

“Scotty?” Jim says, opening his communicator.

“Captain, are you there? What do you see? I’ll be there in two minutes,” Scotty says, sounding rushed as if he is in motion.

“It’s not vaguely rectangular shaped, Scotty,” Jim says. “It’s _person_ shaped.”

“Come again?” Scotty asks incredulously. “Well, get it to stop, whatever it is. We can’t have the integrator circuits overheating, Captain.”

The unmistakable outline of a person is curled inside the web of circuits. A wall of heat hits Jim’s face now that the panel is open. He realizes that this is a bad thing, but for some reason his thoughts seem to be running more sluggishly than usual. Jim’s communicator beeps, signaling that someone else is trying to contact him. He flips it open. It’s Uhura.

“Captain, I know what the tablet says.” There is a note of urgency in her voice, but for some reason her voice sounds distant and faraway. It takes Jim a moment to even remember what tablet she is talking about. He doesn’t take his eyes off of the figure curled inside the panel and his mind feels curiously blank.

As he watches, the figure uncurls. It stretches out towards him. Jim stretches out a hand without thinking.

“It says ‘don’t make contact’,” Uhura reads. “It’s signed _Leonard_.”

Jim freezes, fingertips a hairsbreadth away from the creature in front of him. He quickly draws back, heart beating quickly. _How could Bones have written that?_

But before he can ask Uhura anything, the heat that is coming from the open panel flares suddenly, the circuits turning hazy in a cloud of heat. He barely has time to swear loudly before an energy rocks him, rocks the ship, and he’s not sure if he’s standing upright anymore.

Something else is there, a presence that he can’t see with his eyes but can sense anyway, looking at him with a loneliness that Jim can feel vibrating his teeth until he clenches them tight.

He realizes that the opposite wall of the corridor is suddenly at his back and he grabs it for support, feeling the ship shudder around him. He thinks he hears Uhura calling his name but he can’t understand why.

It feels like a long moment before the red alert lights begin to flash. His ship is in danger. He needs to get up to the bridge. He tries to push himself up but gravity seems to be fighting him.

When Scotty finds him, he is unconscious.

* * *

Leonard stands at the foot of the bed in sickbay where Jim is asleep. Spock stands beside him. They both stare down at Jim and Leonard knows that they are both remembering the same thing.

“When will he awaken?” Spock asks, and Leonard is grateful for that question. Because it reminds him that this time Jim _will_ wake up.

“Shouldn’t be out long. He hit his head pretty hard, but that’s it,” he answers gruffly.

“It is not like last time, Leonard,” Spock says so softly he barely hears it. The use of his first name conjures up memories he doesn’t need right now. Spock staring with cold eyes at Jim sleeping in the hospital back in San Francisco. It’s so far away from where they are here in outer space that Leonard can’t fathom it, but in a way they are not far at all. The Spock that wouldn’t speak for days because he was too guilty to be living while Jim had almost died is still here next to him. Those memories are still here, smuggled out to space like stowaways.

“It was supposed to be me, Doctor,” Spock had said in the darkened hospital room back then. “In the other universe, I was the one who died, not the Captain.”

“Bullshit,” Leonard had said, voice rough, because he couldn’t stand the hopelessness in Spock’s voice. “That’s such bullshit. I don’t fucking care what happened in any other goddamn universe. _This_ universe is too big to worry about what happens in other ones. Let’s worry about destiny when we’re old and tired,” Leonard had said, even though he had felt old, and felt tired.

“But you wish it had been me,” Spock had replied. It had deliberately not been phrased as a question.

“No, Spock, I don’t wish that and don’t you dare put words in my mouth. I’m a doctor, not a god. I don’t get to choose who lives or dies.” At first he had been a bit regretful of the bluntness of his words. But Spock had seemed to find solace in them, which was fine by him. Leonard had meant everything that he had said.

That had been the day he had told Spock to call him by his first name (he had done so while pretending to adjust the sensors over Jim’s biobed, so that he wouldn’t have to look Spock in the eye).

“I know it’s not the same as last time,” Leonard sighs now. He touches Jim’s hand lightly but does not take it, just needing the touch. “It just feels a hell of a lot like it. But I guess I have to get used to the idea of Jim becoming an infrequent denizen of my sickbay. You too actually. The way you both flirt with disaster like you can’t help it.”

He meets Spock’s eyes. The expression on Spock’s face tells him something he already knows. He can’t ask them to change what they are.

* * *

When Jim wakes up, Leonard goes and sits by him.

“Oh shit,” Jim says in a raspy voice. “I fucked up again, didn’t I?”

“I think by now, we’ve established that it’s a habit of yours,” Leonard says, giving Jim a glass of water. He waits until Jim has finished drinking before he says, “So, Spock tells me that I’m going to be sent a thousand years back in the past or something.”

Even though Jim has swallowed the water, he still appears to choke for a moment. “What? What the hell did I miss?”

“That tablet, the one we found? I’m the one who wrote it apparently. It had my name on it. It was in Starfleet code and everything,” Leonard says. His voice sounds detached. When Spock and Nyota had explained it to him, he’d been pretty skeptical about it. But the more they had explained, the more it had started to make sense, and the more Leonard had realized that _this was actually happening_.

“How?” Jim asks. “You don’t even know the language it was written in.”

Leonard’s lips twist. “Not _yet_ ,” he says.

Jim pushes himself up. He looks angry, like Leonard knew he would. Jim is always so ready to fight for him, to defend him. Leonard doesn’t know how to tell him that this time, he can’t. “Not _ever_. I’m not letting you go back in time just to write something down on a rock. What did the tablet say anyway?”

“You don’t remember anything, do you?”

Jim’s eyebrows furrow. “There was that thing curled up in the matter-antimatter integrator circuits. Alive, watching me.” Jim pauses, eyes distant. “I think she told me her name. Chanuu. I could feel what she was feeling.”

Leonard swallows, throat suddenly dry. “She?”

Jim nods. “And then Uhura was saying something but I don’t remember. What happened?” Jim asks, looking anxious.

“Scotty says the only reason we’re not a cloud of dust and debris right now is because he managed to hit the emergency bypass on the integrator in time. But we’re stuck in orbit over Demetrius III right now. No impulse power, no warp capabilities, no nothing.”

Jim looks stricken at the state of his ship. They do not say anything for a long moment.

“The tablet said not to touch her. Chanuu,” Jim says, remembering suddenly. “What would have happened if I had touched her?”

Leonard smiles weakly. “Well, I guess we’ll never know.”

Jim laughs shakily, but his eyes become serious again. “So when can I leave sickbay?” he asks apprehensively.

“You only had a concussion, and I’ve taken care of that. So as long as you promise not to go banging your head on any more walls, you’re free to go,” Leonard says, standing up.

Jim gets off the biobed, looking shocked. “Seriously? That’s it?”

“Don’t act so damn surprised. I only keep you here if there’s something wrong with you that I can cure. Unfortunately, there’s no cure for pure pigheadedness.”

“I bet you could find a cure for it if you really tried, but you’d miss it too much,” Jim jokes, coming closer. He is stepping into Leonard’s space and Leonard lets him. He can tell how delicate this is, their make-believe that everything is okay.

Because it’s really not okay. He doesn’t want to lose Jim. He doesn’t want to be left stranded alone a thousand years in the past on some alien planet.

“Until I met you I didn’t actually think pigheadedness could be a sickness,” Leonard mutters in reply.

Jim grins and slaps Leonard on the shoulder. “I’m going to fix this,” he says softly before moving away, his hand squeezing tightly before letting go. Jim leaves sickbay, and Leonard is left with a tightness in his chest that he cannot explain, not even with all his knowledge of every bone and muscle in his body.

* * *

Jim is fine until Spock and Uhura practically accost him in the corridors of the Enterprise

Uhura’s eyes flash with such anger that he almost takes a step back. “I can’t believe you did this to me again,” she hisses. “I can’t believe you did this to _Scotty_ again. He’s the one who found you, you know. Like last time.” He thinks she might actually hit him but instead she hugs him tightly, nails digging into his shoulder blades.

He meets Spock’s eyes over the top of Uhura’s head and wonders when he suddenly had so many people who he couldn’t bear to let down.

* * *

Scotty comes on to the bridge holding a PADD. He shows it to Jim. Jim wonders briefly if he should apologize to Scotty for what happened in Engineering, but then Scotty gives him a small understanding smile. Jim nods at him gratefully and looks down at the PADD.

“This is the one I took up the Jefferies tube, isn’t it?” Jim says. It is slightly cracked on one side, probably from colliding into the wall, but it still works.

Scotty nods, taking the PADD back and opening a file on it. “As you know, PADDs record every bit of information that’s given to them. Well, when I opened this one up, it seemed to have registered a frequency pattern that I’ve never seen before.”

Jim looks at it, but it is indecipherable to him, a pattern of coding that he can’t tell heads or tails out of. But he feels, more than sees, Spock come up behind him, reading the file over his shoulder. And he can sense Chekov’s interest all the way from here.

Jim smiles up at Scotty. “We’ll take a look at it, thanks.”

Spock and Chekov have been going over the PADD’s file for nearly an hour before they come to any kind of conclusion. Chekov has to explain it to Jim a second time before he finally gets it. It’s hard to keep a straight face about it though. Chekov has a very interesting way of demonstrating things. Sulu in particular, is obviously holding back laughter, and has a PADD positioned in such a way that Jim is almost sure that he’s taking a holovid.

The young navigator has his arms outstretched above his head, curls bouncing as he speaks excitedly. “Just like we have limbs that spread in different directions,” he says, wiggling his arms, “so this Chanuu appears to have extensions of herself that spread into different dimensions.”

Chekov stretches his right arm out even further. “This is the extension of Chanuu that extends into our three dimensions, manifesting as interference patterns in our ship’s circuits and in the PADD that Mr. Scott found.”

“And as emotions,” Jim adds, remembering the intense loneliness that he had felt.

Chekov nods. He gestures to the rest of his body with his other hand. “The remainder of Chanuu’s ‘body’ is in a higher dimension. It does not exist as we know it, but as a projection of space-time.”

“But how could a being like that have a written language if they don’t even exist in our physical dimensions?” Jim asks. They’ve come to the conclusion that the language the tablet is written in must be Chanuu’s language. It’s the only possibility that makes sense.

Spock comes forward. “I am not sure, Captain.”

Jim smiles lightly. He’s gotten used to the way Spock talks by now. “Okay, Mr. Spock. Then what’s your best guess?”

“I would suggest that trans-dimensional beings originate first in the physical dimensions, then as they mature, they become able to traverse the higher dimensions,” Spock says.

“What, like trans-dimensional puberty?” Jim asks.

Spock seems to sigh. “An imprecise phrasing, but yes.”

Jim nods slowly. “So she could have the ability to send someone back in time?”

Chekov shrugs. “Nafisa Ahmed from Rigel IV has written a study hypothesizing this exact phenomenon about trans-dimensional beings. So far there has been no conclusive evidence. But it is possible, Captain.”

Jim looks up and finds Bones there. He seems to have come in while Chekov was explaining. Bones glances at Jim for a moment before looking away, his face fixed in an expression that Jim cannot read.

The first thing Jim does when the shift ends is to pull out a PADD, access the ship’s library, and start reading Nafisa Ahmed’s study.

* * *

Leonard isn’t stupid. He sees that they’re not getting anywhere with trying to find a way to stop what’s happening. He doesn’t know anything about higher dimensions or trans-dimensional beings, and he doesn’t really care. All he knows is that he’s most likely going to be taking a trip pretty soon, and he’s sure as hell not going to go unprepared.

He goes to sickbay and makes sure that it’s all in order so it won’t fall apart when he’s gone. He talks to M’Benga, who would become the chief medical officer in his absence. He tries to keep it vague, not wanting to let on what he’s doing, but the look in M’Benga’s eyes tells him that he didn’t do a very good job.

Afterwards, he sits in his office, staring at the walls. It’s lonely here, he realizes. Without thinking what he’s doing, he goes to his computer and locates Carol Marcus. He is surprised to find her in one of the ship’s biology labs.

When he comes in, he finds her immediately, bent over a microscope. She seems to be concentrating heavily, but still looks up as he approaches her.

“Leonard,” she greets softly, smiling. “What a surprise. Sit.” She pulls a stool up to the counter she is working at and he sits by her.

“I didn’t expect to find you in the biology labs,” he says.

She looks a little bashful. “Well, I have had training as a biologist you know. I wanted to go into terraforming theory originally, before I decided to go into weaponry. After all that’s happened, I suppose I’m going back to my roots.”

Leonard lifts his eyebrows. “Terraforming? I thought that stuff was pretty unstable.”

 “That just means there’s room for improvement.” Carol smiles, almost smugly. “But I know you didn’t come all the way down here to ask about my career.”

Leonard leans against the lab counter. “I guess I’m just tired of everyone staring at me like I’m going to vanish any second.”

Carol looks confused. “Vanish? What are you talking about?”

He almost laughs. “Carol, when’s the last time you left this lab?”

“Why what’s happened?” she says, pushing the microscope away so that she can prop her elbow on the lab counter. She looks so earnest and confused that this time Leonard does laugh.

“Why don’t I tell you about it over lunch?” he asks.

* * *

It’s a relief to finally talk to someone who doesn’t know about everything that’s going on, and doesn’t stare at him solemnly when they think he isn’t looking. He loves this crew, he really does. But he hates the thought of them going to such lengths to protect him.

Carol listens to him with her head tilted slightly to the side. Her fork, still strung with some kind of noodles, hangs untouched in midair.

Leonard realizes by the end of his retelling that he is ranting a bit, and makes himself shut up and take a large gulp of water. He’s frustrated about the whole thing. He hates not being able to do anything about what’s happening.

“Why haven’t you told this to Kirk?” she asks.

“Jim’s practically locked himself up reading every study he can find on trans-dimensional whatever,” Leonard sighs. He hasn’t been able to have a decent conversation with Jim since he woke up in sickbay.

Carol nods, eyes serious. “Well, I don’t know anything about all that, but there is something we can do to at least prepare you.”

After they finish eating, Carol takes him back to the labs, and pulls up the data that the ship’s scientists have found.

“It looks like the exogeologists have put together a rough timeline for the planet’s development,” she says, staring at the computer screen with her chin cupped in one hand. “According to this, one thousand years ago, Demetrius III was still in the middle of an ice age.” She turns to look at him. “I suppose you should expect some brisk weather.”

* * *

So he starts packing, setting one of Starfleet’s survival packs on his bed and augmenting it with his warmest clothes and thermal blankets. He also adds his medkit, a phaser, and a knife.

Jim finds him as he is packing, letting himself into Leonard’s quarters without even a knock.

“What are you doing?” Jim asks immediately, putting down the PADD he is holding.

Leonard freezes with a thermal blanket in his hand, feeling guilty for a moment before remembering that Jim has no right to get angry over this.

“I’m packing,” Leonard answers gruffly, stuffing the blanket into his pack with slightly more force than is necessary.

Jim’s hands close on his wrists, holding them tightly and pulling them away from the pack that Leonard has slowly been filling with supplies. “No, you’re not. You’re not _going_ anywhere, Bones. You don’t need to pack.”

“Jim, let go. I have to at least be ready,” Leonard tries to break free of Jim’s grasp but Jim only grips him tighter, pinning his arms against his sides and pushing him against the wall.

“I don’t get it. Do you _want_ to leave? Is that it?” he asks angrily.

“Of course I don’t want to leave,” Leonard snaps.

“Then _what_?” Jim’s fingers dig harder into his wrists until Leonard is sure that he’ll leave bruises.

“Jim, when you were up in that Jefferies tube, the only thing that stopped you from touching that thing was because I had sent you that message. If I don’t go back and leave that message for you, then—”

Jim interrupts him. “So instead of me going back a thousand years, you want it to be you? Well, sorry to rain on your parade Bones, but that isn’t happening. I’m not letting you leave.”

“I have to at least be ready, Jim. For whatever happens.”

Jim glares at him but does not contradict him. Leonard sighs. He knows how much it costs Jim, who has spent his whole life beating the odds and standing up to no-win scenarios, to make any concession of defeat.

“But you have to promise me,” Leonard begins, his voice already beginning to feel shaky. “If I don’t come back, don’t look for me. Fix the ship and get the hell out of here. And if you start skipping meals again like you did after Vulcan, so help me, I will come back and haunt—”.

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Jim’s mouth is on his, pushing in mercilessly. It’s rough and desperate. Pain and pleasure mix until Leonard can’t distinguish them. Jim breaks away for a moment, finally looking up at him.

“Stop talking,” Jim breathes, kissing him again. He runs his teeth against Leonard’s bottom lip until Leonard cannot help but moan. Jim’s hands finally loosen from around his wrists to creep up beneath Leonard’s shirt, even as Jim’s hips move against his in an aching rhythm.

Leonard uses his newly freed hands to push Jim to the bed. As he goes, Jim sweeps Leonard’s pack to the floor. The supplies fall to the floor into a haphazard mess, and Jim lays himself out on the bed, legs spread open and inviting.

“I’m going to have to pick all of that up, asshole,” Leonard says, unable to stop himself from sounding out-of-breath.

“Not right now, you don’t,” Jim says smugly. His lips are kiss-swollen and Leonard can see that he’s already hard, so he forgets about the pack, joining Jim on the bed.

“Shut up,” Leonard says, as Jim’s smirk gets even wider.

“Make me,” Jim says, his voice barely more than a low growl.

So Leonard leans in and kisses him. He’s never really been able to deny Jim anything.

* * *

Later, Jim twists himself tightly against Leonard and falls asleep. Leonard should get up and continue packing, but Jim has an arm and a leg thrown over him, effectively trapping him. He wonders if Jim has arranged himself like this on purpose.

So instead Leonard packs in a different way by memorizing the way that Jim breathes, the way that he feels against him, the texture of his hair threaded through his fingers. He sets it all to memory as if Jim is an anatomical model, lightly tracing hip to spine to shoulder to arm to wrist with his fingers. These supplies are far more important than anything he can zip up into a bag, far more dear to him than water or warmth.

He falls asleep halfway through memorizing the curve of Jim’s ear with his lips.

* * *

They have two days of respite before Chanuu comes back for him.

She’s interfering with the ship’s circuits again, but this time she does not stay in Engineering. She moves through the rest of the decks, making her way slowly but surely up to the bridge. The bridge crew tracks her progress on the computers.

Leonard is here, and has been for the past few hours because Jim hasn’t let him leave. He is convinced that somehow he can keep him safe here on the bridge. They’ve sent out security officers, but from the reports that are running in, phaser fire is ineffective.

Chanuu slowly advances, making a rambling way through the ship like it is exploring it. But its path is taking it closer and closer to the bridge, to Leonard.

There was some trouble when Leonard insisted on taking his pack up to the bridge. Spock was finally able to convince Jim of the logic of it, but Leonard still sees Jim shoot glares at the pack every now and then. He has it on now, feeling slightly ridiculous, standing in front of a computer map of the Enterprise, and watching Chanuu come closer. He’s resigns himself to waiting.

That is, until she starts attacking people.

The reports start coming in, sounding rushed and slightly panicked. Chanuu has suddenly turned hostile, and has begun flinging anyone in its way to the sides. One of the security officers have been reported being flung thirty feet away, luckily getting nothing but some broken ribs.

Leonard grits his teeth. He should be in sickbay. He should be doing _something_. Instead he’s stuck here just sweating it out (literally, since he’s decided to put on one of the thermal undershirts just in case). He makes up his mind in a split second.

Before he can second-guess himself, Leonard moves quickly towards the turbolift, pressing the button to close the door. He times it well, moving when everyone’s attention is turned to a viewing screen on the other side of the bridge. Spock is the only one who reacts fast enough. With a speed that is almost frightening, Leonard sees Spock advance towards the turbolift, looking as if he is ready to pry him out of there with his bare hands. But before Spock can reach him, the turbolift doors close.

The last glimpse of Jim’s expression that Leonard catches is one of open-mouthed shock, his face partially concealed by the elbow of a passing yeoman. The doors close before Leonard can really see him. He rides the turbolift down with an empty feeling in his stomach. He tries not to think how that might have just been the last time he will ever see Jim’s face.

When the turbolift doors open, Leonard walks fast, knowing that it is only a matter of time before Jim sends people down to get him and bring him back (or, more likely, coming down and getting him himself). The deck is deserted. It has been evacuated since Chanuu has started wreaking havoc. Everything is eerie and too quiet, and Leonard keeps seeing shadows jump out at him every time he turns a corner.

He’s been walking for a while before he realizes he doesn’t know where to go. He only knows that it’s somewhere on this deck, but it may have moved by now.

“Dammit,” he whispers, stopping in his tracks, wondering where to go. If Jim finds him here, he’ll take him back up to the bridge where he doesn’t want to be. He briefly wonders if he should just go to sickbay instead, but to get there he’d have to take the turbolift, and that’s just too risky. Also, sickbay would be the first place Jim would look. No, he has to keep moving. So he continues to walk briskly through the corridors.

The lights flicker once and go out.

Leonard freezes. The only sound he can hear is his own breathing and the sound of his heart, which sounds too loud. It is completely dark. And it’s cold. He can feel the temperature dropping. The environmental controls are failing.

With a jolt, he realizes that he feels suddenly weightless. This is confirmed when Leonard’s feet lift off the ground. He windmills his arms for a moment, feeling off-balance, before going completely still, dread curdling in his belly. Because if the artificial gravity fields and the environmental controls have both gone offline, the atmospheric controls will probably be next. He’s going to have trouble breathing real soon.

He does his best to grope along the walls where he knows he saw an emergency respirator dispenser. This is made more difficult by the fact that he is now floating completely off the floor, trying not to lose his sense of up and down. It doesn’t help that the pack he is wearing is throwing him off as well.

During Academy training, they were prepped for how to deal with no gravity. For a lot of his classmates (including Jim), it was an enjoyable class. But Leonard has always felt nauseous without gravity, has never gotten used to the disorientation.

His fingers finally close on a respirator and he quickly yanks it out of the dispenser. By now it is becoming more and more difficult to breathe, and it is so cold that his hands are losing feeling. He puts the respirator on clumsily and inhales the plentiful air gratefully.

That’s when he feels a presence and he knows unmistakably that it is Chanuu. He can see nothing in the darkness, but he knows that she is there. The feeling of her presence increases and Leonard realizes that she is getting closer to him.

If his face were not covered by the respirator, he would have cried out. He feels such an incredible fear and confusion. Whatever has come for him is frightened beyond imagining, and Leonard feels moisture spring unbidden to his eyes. Underneath the fear and confusion, there is a loneliness that he can feel aching deep in his bones.

_I’m sorry the crew fired at you_ , he wants to say. _They didn’t know better. They were trying to protect me. Don’t be afraid._

The fear and confusion intensifies until it is almost unbearable, and Leonard knows that Chanuu must be right in front of him, nearly touching him. He closes his eyes and everything stills.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, the entire right side of his face is numb with cold. He pushes himself up slowly, limbs screaming their stiffness. He looks around at a barren landscape. A thin layer of snow covers everything. The freezing wind reminds him that he cannot linger here.

He extracts his heaviest coat from his pack and wraps it around himself tightly before staggering to his feet. Desolation claws at him. He is well and truly alone now, stranded so far from home and family that it doesn’t even seem real to him yet.

But if there’s a skill that he’s honed after all these years of taking care of the sick and wounded, it’s how to push thoughts of hopelessness aside, to focus on the survival of the patient. He supposes that, for the first time, the only patient he’s got left to doctor is himself.

Tightening the pack around his shoulders, Leonard sets off to find shelter.

He ends up finding a small cave that manages to block out most of the wind. He gets a fitful night of sleep and wakes up to a disgusting taste in his mouth. After a moment of confusion, he realizes that it’s just the aftertaste of the Starfleet-issue sustenance bars, which he had halfheartedly nibbled on last night.

“I guess I’ll have to get used to that,” he says to himself, looking with disgust at the rest of the food bar.

He can’t let himself slow down, because then he’ll start thinking about everything and everyone he’s left behind. So he gets up and decides to explore his new surroundings.

There’s nothing particularly remarkable in the near vicinity. Everything is pretty flat, covered in white frost. It’s hard to believe that in one thousand years, this whole place will soon be covered in mud, the air turned muggy and humid.

He turns his attention to the ground, where he is comforted to find small animal tracks. This is what they taught them in the survival courses back at the Academy. The thought of actually hunting and skinning an animal makes his stomach twist in revulsion, but he knows that it will soon become a necessity. The food bars that he stuffed into his pack won’t last more than a month, six weeks if he’s careful, and he wants to keep them for emergencies.

That night Leonard dreams he is back on the Enterprise. When he wakes up he automatically looks to his left, but no one is there.

* * *

On the fourth day, he discovers that the animal tracks belong to a medium-sized rodent-like animal. He makes a spear of some sort by tying his knife to the end of a long stick.

It takes him four hours, at the end of which is he is covered in sweat and swearing profusely, to catch one scrawny animal, which he’s begun referring to as Motherfucking Protein. This is actually the second Motherfucking Protein that he’s captured, but the first one had escaped by revealing itself to have very sharp teeth that easily sliced through one of his Starfleet-issue gloves and drew blood.

He steels himself before he goes in for the kill but he still ends up spending twenty minutes bent over in the snow, retching. This isn’t the first time he’s seen blood of course, or even the first time he’s had to kill something, but the sheer brutality of it is still a shock.

The only good thing about the whole experience is that the Motherfucking Protein’s meat is practically tasteless, which is more than he can say about the sustenance bars.

* * *

It is on the fifth day that he finds Jim.

Leonard is walking through the snow as quietly as he can, in search of more Motherfucking Protein, and is following a set of animal tracks through the snow when he comes across another set of tracks. Boot prints. He freezes, heart beating wildly, before beginning to follow them, not aware that he is walking unevenly and staggering slightly.

He catches sight of a figure in the distance and his blood runs cold with fear. What if it’s a hostile alien? He had stupidly left his phaser back in the cave along with the rest of his pack. But if he goes back to get it, he may never see who or what it is. He swallows, hand tightening on the spear he is holding.

He makes up his mind and begins to approach the figure. As he comes closer, he realizes with a jolt that they’re wearing a gold Starfleet uniform. _Jim_.

“Jim!” he yells, running towards the figure, who turns at the sound. It _is_ Jim.

“Bones!” Jim leaps at him. Leonard quickly drops the spear he is holding so that Jim won’t get impaled. He is then locked into a tight hug that knocks the breath out of him.

“I was looking _everywhere_ for you. Wow, for a second I thought you were some local native, hunting me with that spear,” Jim laughs. He is shivering against Leonard, cheeks pink with cold.

“Kid, what the hell are you doing here?” Leonard asks. “Never mind, tell me later. We have to get out of this cold.”

Jim nods fervently, rubbing his arms violently. Leonard quickly shrugs off his coat and wraps it around Jim.

“You don’t have to do that, I’m fine,” Jim protests, as he is engulfed in the huge coat. Leonard’s shoulders have always been broader than Jim’s, so it is a familiar occurrence for Jim to look like a tiny kitten when he wears Leonard’s things. Leonard smiles. Dammit, but he’s missed this.

“Like hell you are. I don’t want you freezing into an ice cube on the way back,” Leonard says, and he begins to drag Jim back towards the cave.

Jim makes a retort but it is muffled by the coat, which he has pulled all the way up to his nose. Leonard nods, pretending to have heard him. They continue to walk in silence, the wind blowing loud in their ears.

“Bones, wait, I just saw something!” Jim exclaims, ripping the coat away from his mouth and pointing.

He turns around and looks. The wind is blowing snow everywhere, but it is hard to miss the unmistakable silhouette of a small figure standing in the snow.

“Hey, is it Chanuu? Bones, come on,” Jim says, tugging Leonard in its direction.

He refuses to move, and pulls Jim back. “No way, Jim. What if you get sent back another thousand years?”

Jim struggles against him for a moment, then stills. “She’s not there anymore.”

He’s right. Leonard shivers, and it’s not from the cold. “Come on,” he says gruffly, and leads Jim to the cave.

Leonard waits until Jim is in the safe, warm cave, wrapped in a thermal blanket, and sat in front of a crackling fire before he finally asks him the question that has been sitting on his tongue ever since he first saw him.

“So? What happened?”

Jim laughs. It’s almost bitter. He is warming his hands over the fire, face cast in flickering shadows.

“You mean after you bailed on us?” he asks.

Leonard’s breath catches in his throat for a moment. “That’s not what happened, Jim.”

“Isn’t it?” Jim says. He isn’t raising his voice, but Leonard can tell that he’s angry. “You just walked out of there without saying anything.”

“I wasn’t going to let anyone else get hurt on account of me.” His hands tighten, nails digging into the palms of his hands.

“When you disappeared, I went down to the planet to look for you. When I came back to the Enterprise, Chanuu was waiting for me in the transporter room. And now I’m here, while my crew is still stranded in orbit.” Jim adds, scathingly, “If you had stayed on the bridge, we might both still be on the Enterprise.”

“You don’t know that,” Leonard says, even though he’s not sure anymore.

“Whatever,” Jim says. He doesn’t sound angry anymore, just very tired. Since Leonard wasn’t able to get any food today, they split a food bar instead, eating in silence.

* * *

Leonard comes awake in the middle of the night, tensing up when he feels something at his back.

“Jim,” he says raggedly, relaxing a bit.

“Shut up, it’s so cold. Jesus,” Jim says, teeth chattering, and if Leonard were a bit more awake and a bit less relieved to have Jim talking to him like normal again, he would tell Jim to stop whining. As it is, he moves over a little to make room, and Jim presses himself up against him.

He falls asleep to the oddly comforting sensation of Jim’s cold nose buried in the crook of his neck.

* * *

Leonard follows Jim through the snow as they look for the figure they saw the day before. Jim wears a poncho of sorts that Leonard made for him using his knife and one of the thermal blankets. He won’t be winning any awards for best dressed anytime soon, but at least he’s warm.

“Is there anything in this direction?” Jim asks him, as they trek through the snow to where they had seen the silhouette.

“I haven’t been this far out,” Leonard admits. He doesn’t like going too far from the cave, afraid he’d lose sight of it. But Jim pushes out without hesitation, no fear of getting lost. He’s walking too fast, and Leonard realizes he’s beginning to lose sight of him.

“Jim, slow down,” he yells, stumbling through the snow as he tries to catch up. He realizes that they’re on a slope, the ground dipping down into a sort of valley.

“Bones, look at this!” Jim says excitedly.

Leonard finally catches up. His eyes widen when he look around. Stone snow-covered ruins litter the small valley.

“Christ,” he breathes.

“A whole civilization,” Jim says. They approach the structures. It is just parts of buildings, segments of walls, an archway or two. “What happened to them?”

“Jim, look,” Leonard says, peering at a wall. It is covered in the same writing that they had found on the tablet. “It’s the same language.”

Jim comes up beside him, feeling the wall with his hand. “It’s the same material as the tablet as well.”

“Are you sure?”

Jim grins crookedly. “Yeah, I remember it pretty well from when I was feeling it that day in the mud. Damn, you should have seen the look on your face when I took off my glove. I haven’t seen you go that purple since the day I used our toaster to make a miniature Cardassian carbon reactor.”

Leonard swats Jim on the side of his head. “Asshole. I’ll never eat another piece of toast in my life, I hope you know.”

Jim laughs and dances away from him, continuing to look around the ruins eagerly. He gasps suddenly and jumps at something half-buried in the snow.

“Look!” he says excitedly, dusting it off. It’s a piece of stone, probably broken off from one of the structures. Leonard stares at it blankly, not sure why Jim finds it so important.

“It’s pretty much the same size and shape as the tablet!” he says, and with a grunt, lifts it up so that it stands upright. “Right? We could use your phaser and write whatever we want on here.”

“Whatever we want?” he repeats. “Jim, we know what we have to write. Unfortunately, we have no idea how to write in the language. We also have no idea where to actually put this thing,” he says, nudging the stone with his foot, “where you’ll trip over it a thousand years later.”

Jim doesn’t appear to be bothered. “We’ll figure out the second part later. As for the first, who says we have to write anything in an alien language? I could write ‘leave Demetrius III right away you losers’ on this thing.”

Leonard gapes. “Jim, wait. There has to be a good reason why that message was written like that. It was in Starfleet code too! We can’t just go changing the past. Who knows what could happen?”

“Like what?” Jim asks stubbornly. “Bones, this could be our ticket home.”

“Or it could make things worse. Jim, if that tablet hadn’t been there the exact way it was, in that exact code and language, you wouldn’t have gotten that message at the exact time that you did.”

Jim shrugs. “So? The message said not to make contact, so I didn’t. But I still ended up getting sent back in time.”

“But what if we change things so you get sent back in time at that moment, back in the Jefferies tube? What if you get sent back before I do? Before we have a warning, before I can get prepared? You’d get sent here and you would never find me and you’d _freeze_ , Jim.” He doesn’t realize that he’s on his knees, kneeling beside Jim, one hand curled tightly around Jim’s arm.

“You’re not sure about that,” Jim says quietly.

“Maybe not. But at least this way, I know that we’re together and that you’re safe.” He lifts his hand so that it cradles the back of Jim’s neck, fingers buried in the short hair there.

“You’re so _weird_ ,” Jim whispers. But he shifts forward so that their foreheads lean on each other. They may be far from home, but they’re still here together, warm in each other’s arms.

They have been like that for a while before Jim jerks away suddenly, fingers digging into Leonard’s shoulder. “Bones,” he hisses, eyes fixed on something behind him.

Leonard turns. It is Chanuu. She stands there a ways off, existing as barely more than a shadow and a visible person-shaped distortion in the air. He would never know she was there, except that he can feel her presence pressing upon him. He recognizes that bone-deep loneliness. This time, it is overlaid with a sharp curiosity that feels like it is digging probing fingers into his skull.

Jim stands and begins to walk towards her.

“Jim, wait,” Leonard whispers, but Jim keeps walking until he is standing at arm’s length from the figure, who does not move.

“I’m Captain James T. Kirk, Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. That’s Leonard McCoy, my Chief Medical Officer,” Jim says, pointing back to Leonard. “And you’re Chanuu, right? Why are you here?”

Leonard gasps, eyes falling shut. Emotions pass so quickly that he can only catch fleeting sensations and impressions. A family, happy and laughing. Safety and security. Then confusion, wandering lost, separation. The loneliness comes back again, stronger than ever until Leonard bends over in the snow under the crushing weight of it.

He feels Jim at his side, pushing him upright, and holding him tightly. “Bones, it’s not your loneliness. You’re not alone,” he says quietly. Leonard nods, taking gulps of the cold air.

“You got lost,” he says to Chanuu, still breathing heavily. “Separated from your family.”

“Is that why you brought us here? You were lonely?” Jim asks.

Leonard understands. Chanuu did not mean to send them back, to leave them stranded here in the cold. She was reaching out to them, craving comfort and company. For her kind, getting sent back a thousand years in time was probably no big deal. For them, creatures with the trans-dimensional capabilities of a potato, it was a lot more than that.

His theory is confirmed when something like an apology brews in the air around them. He realizes that Chanuu is very young, for her kind. Her presence shifts with something like sheepishness.

“Then you can send us back, right?” Jim asks carefully.

A resounding affirmative. Leonard almost falls to his knees in relief. They’re going to get home.

“Wait, Jim, the tablet,” he remembers. They have to do that before they leave.

Jim looks stymied for a moment, chewing at his bottom lip. He walks over to a nearby wall, and fingers the carved writing there. “Can you teach us how to read this?”

Chanuu steps closer to them. Leonard gasps, eyes sliding shut at the strange sensation. It feels like energy is running through him, passing on more memories and impressions like before. But this time he catches speech, in voices that are at once familiar and foreign, and he realizes that he can understand what they’re saying.

It feels like an age has passed when his eyes open and find Jim’s, which are open wide and wondering. Jim opens his mouth, and says hesitantly, “I didn’t expect that.”

It takes Leonard a moment to realize that Jim didn’t just say that in Standard. He turns slowly to the wall with the writing. He can read it. He catches words and phrases, realizes that they’re folk stories. He feels a surge of elation from Chanuu, who must be happy to hear her own language after such a long time.

“Wait until Nyota hears about this,” he tells Jim, trying out the new language. The syllables feel strange in his mouth, but this is how he’s going to get home, and that’s a pretty sweet deal.

They jog back to the cave to get the phaser. Even though night is falling fast, both of them don’t want to linger. Chanuu is there when they come back, and watches as they carve the message into the stone.

“Why Starfleet code? I mean, this particular code is pretty useless as codes go. They taught it to us in the Academy, but the Klingons broke it ages ago,” Jim asks. Leonard has his tongue between his teeth as carves into the tablet. He’s never been much good with a phaser, but this is more like laser scalpel work than anything else.

“Well, if it wasn’t in code, then Nyota would have translated it too soon. This way, she gets the message to you right when you need it,” Leonard says, trying to concentrate.

Jim laughs loudly, startling him. He takes his finger off the trigger before he can mess up the writing.

“What?” he snaps.

“Uhura’s just too good at her job, huh?”

Leonard laughs a little. “She’s probably the only one in the fleet who wouldn’t bat an eyelash at an entire new language.”

“I miss them,” Jim sighs. “I haven’t even been gone from that long, but we’re still a whole thousand years away from them.”

Jim is quiet as Leonard finishes carving the message.

When they’re done, Chanuu leads them to where they have to set the tablet down to let it be found at the right time. It’s a bit of a walk, and it’s so dark that the only thing Leonard can see is the faint glow of Chanuu’s silhouette. Leonard is so cold that he can’t feel his feet anymore. The only thing keeping him walking is the prospect of getting back to the Enterprise. Jim carries the tablet in his arms, and he can’t stop grinning.

Jim giggles as they walk.

“What?” Leonard asks.

Jim swears long and low under his breath, giggling again. “Bones, I just swore in an alien language. I’m the first human being to ever swear in this language.”

Leonard rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be a Captain?” he grumbles. Chanuu turns back to them, and Leonard gets the feeling that she’s affronted.

“Sorry,” Jim says, properly chagrined.

Chanuu leads them further through the snow for a bit, before stopping.

“Is this where we’re supposed to put it?” Jim asks.

Chanuu flickers for a bit, like she’s checking to make sure. Leonard wonders how that must be like, to be able to move across time at whim.

A mental nod.

“Great, let’s do this,” Jim says, setting the tablet down with a grunt. He and Leonard fix it upright as best as they can.

“I can’t believe I’m the one who makes future-me trip. Can’t I just put it to the left a little bit so that Spock trips over it instead? Come on, it’ll be hilarious,” Jim jokes.

“No, Jim,” Leonard sighs, even if he has to admit that the idea of Spock falling face-first into the mud has pretty good comedic value.

“Chanuu, we’re ready,” Leonard calls in her language. He takes Jim’s hand and Jim squeezes reassurance into him. Chanuu draws close, nothing but a pale outline in the dark. She reaches out, and Leonard is taken away again.

It’s different this time. It feels like bolts of energy are running through him, and this time it’s unpleasant. He realizes something is wrong when he doesn’t feel Jim beside him. He tries to call out for him, but the silence is too oppressive for him to break with his voice.

Suddenly he is gasping for breath and blinking in the strong light of the transporter room. The ensign at the transporter controls shrieks at his sudden appearance.

“What happened?” he asks Chanuu, who stands beside him, carefully at a distance. “Where’s Jim?”

He feels her confusion like a sharp kick in the gut. She doesn’t know.

He becomes aware that there are about five people in the transporter room staring at him. “We have to get to the bridge, tell them we’re coming,” he says to the nearest ensign, who stutters an affirmative and scurries off.

“Come on,” he tells Chanuu, and runs towards the turbolift. Panic makes nausea roll deep in his gut. Jim was _right there_ and something tore him away from him. He rides the turbolift up to the bridge impatiently. Chanuu is barely visible beside him, and he realizes that she’s controlling herself so that she won’t mess with the circuits of the ship, which is good since this whole thing would be a lot harder if she made the turbolift go haywire or something.

“Bridge to McCoy,” Nyota’s breathless voice comes on the intercom. He punches the button.

“McCoy here.” He ignores the gasp of relief that his voice brings her. Later. He’ll share her happiness later, not while Jim is still in danger. “Jim is missing. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

Uhura’s voice turns professional in a heartbeat. “As far as we can tell, we seem to be under attack. There are more of them, like Chanuu. Scotty’s barely been able to keep the engines in order.” She pauses before going on. “About thirty crewmembers are missing.”

Something in her voice makes him ask. “Spock?”

“He’s been gone for about an hour now,” Nyota answers. Her voice is stiff and emotionless.

Leonard turns to Chanuu, who has been listening attentively. “I think I know why.”

When they make it up on the bridge, Leonard wastes no time in explaining everything. He doesn’t know how much time they have and he doesn’t want any more crewmembers to disappear.

“I think they’re looking for her,” he says, gesturing to Chanuu. “They probably think we’re keeping her hostage. We need to send them a message.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Sulu asks. He sits in the Captain’s chair, looking grim.

Leonard flounders for a moment, unsure. Then Chekov pipes up.

“The frequency pattern!” he exclaims. “If we patch it through the ship’s communication lines, we could send them a message.”

Nyota nods. “That could work. But what message do we send?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Leonard says, and he grabs a PADD and a stylus and begins to write, handwriting settling into the smooth, flowing script that, four hours ago, he couldn’t read at all. He keeps the message brief and to the point. When he’s finished, he hands it over to Nyota, who looks surprised.

“This is…” she trails off, eyes wide.

“You can send this, right?” he asks. She nods, turning back to her station and beginning to work.

The ship trembles under their feet, engines stuttering and starting again. The readings on the bridge computers fluctuate wildly. Chanuu keeps close to him. The crew hadn’t had time to be surprised by her appearance, too busy on getting through this, but he can feel her fear.

“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you home,” he says, trying to reassure her. He feels heads turn at the sound of him speaking an alien language, but he ignores it. Nyota is working with fierce determination at her station, and Chekov is helping her, both of them speaking quickly to each other.

“Got it!” Nyota says triumphantly. “Sending it now.”

The frantic activity on the bridge quiets down. Everyone holds their breath, and waits. Nothing happens for a long moment. Then, Leonard realizes that the ship’s engines have calmed. The readings on the computers become stable. Red alert lights turn green as the ship’s impulse power and warp capabilities come back online. At the same moment, Chanuu bursts into elation, her joy so strong that everyone on the bridge gasps. Then, as quickly as she came, she is gone.

It is quiet on the bridge. For a terrible split second, Leonard thinks that he’s done something wrong, that he’s lost Jim with no way to get him back.

Sulu turns to him, looking as if he’s about to say something. Then the intercom comes on. “Transporter room to bridge. Kirk here.”

Leonard’s hands grip the railing, knees suddenly weak with relief. Sulu grins at him. “Sulu here. Welcome back, Captain. Is Commander Spock with you?”

“Spock’s here, everyone’s here. A bit sick of being covered in mud, but we’re fine,” Jim answers.

Leonard snaps to attention and walks over to the intercom. “Jim, all of you had better get your asses back to medbay. McCoy out.”

He storms back into the turbolift where he finally lets himself sag against the wall and let out a long slow breath of relief.

* * *

The crew is in poor shape and Leonard has his hands full. Thirty crewmembers, including Jim and Spock, were taken by Chanuu’s family and dropped on Demetrius III sometime in the future, when the planet was in full swamp mode.

They were there for a total of six days.

The crew’s bloodstreams are a mess of parasites and pathogens, and everyone is weak, most of them unable to keep food down. If they had been down there any longer, they wouldn’t have made it.

“For some reason, Spock and I were fine when everyone else was getting sick. Which was good because then we could look after the rest of them,” Jim says. He’s still covered in mud and he looks exhausted, but his eyes look bright and blue underneath the grime. Spock stands beside him, looking just as tired, but both of them refuse to rest.

“Of course,” Leonard groans, realizing. “The hyposprays that I gave you after that first day on the planet. It kept you both safe.”

“Making mud cakes saved the day,” Jim says, clapping Spock on the shoulder, who bears it stiffly. Leonard is surprised that they survived even a day stranded on some mud planet without killing each other, let alone six entire days.

“All right you two, since you’re both fine, get back to your quarters and rest. And I mean, _rest_ ,” he says, fixing them both with pointed looks.

“And you, Doctor?” Spock asks.

Leonard flushes. “I have to synthesize the hyposprays for the crew and fix up the damage that the mud bugs did to them.”

“That’s not fair, Bones,” Jim protests. “If you’re doing that, at least let me go check on how the engines are doing.”

Leonard works his jaw. He doesn’t have time for this. Jim is back to being absolutely infuriating. He almost misses it when they were alone on the icy planet, where he could at least keep an eye on him.

“Fine,” he relents. “One hour, that’s it. But make sure you take a shower first.”

Jim grins. “I love you, Bones!” He dances away, the doors to medbay closing behind him.

Leonard flushes again, for a different reason. Spock simply lifts an eyebrow at him before leaving, probably to find Nyota. When he’s gone, Leonard takes a deep breath and begins to work.

* * *

He finds Jim in his own quarters. He’s slumped over asleep at the desk, face planted on a PADD and snoring lightly. Leonard stands in the doorway, watching for a moment. He’s so exhausted that he’s almost swaying on his feet. He managed to take a quick sonic shower at medbay, so at least he’s clean, all signs of sleeping rough gone. But he’s weary enough to sleep for a century.

He walks over to Jim and wraps an arm around him, lifting him with a grunt and dragging him to the bed. He’s had more than enough practice doing this, would come back to his dorm to find Jim asleep on his studies all the time. Jim’s going to have terrible back problems when he’s old because he keeps falling asleep at his desk.

The imprint from the PADD marks Jim’s face, and Leonard smiles tiredly as he begins to strip off his boots. Jim comes awake as he is taking off Jim’s pants.

“Wow Bones, at least wait for when I’m awake,” Jim says, his voice sleepy and slurred.

“Calm down, kid. Go back to sleep,” Leonard grumbles. He takes off his own clothes and settles in beside Jim. He can barely keep his eyes open and all he wants to do is sleep. But Jim, now awake, isn’t going to fall asleep so quickly.

“I was waiting up for you. Thought I closed my eyes for only a second,” Jim says quietly. He lifts a hand and lightly traces Leonard’s jaw and chin, skirting just below his lips. “How’s the crew doing?” he asks. His fingers trail down Leonard’s neck, and Leonard tries not to shiver.

“They’re fine. Just need rest and nourishment. Like you,” Leonard says. Jim hand reaches his shoulder, cresting over the lines of his collarbone. Jim rarely does this. His touches are usually fleeting, short bursts of passion. This slow lingering touch is something different, and it squeezes at Leonard’s heart. “How’re the engines doing?” he asks, voice barely more than a whisper.

Jim’s hand trails down his side, to squeeze tightly at his hip. “Scotty says they’re functioning almost perfectly now. We’ll be ready to leave orbit soon.”

“Good riddance,” Leonard says. First new planet and it’s almost a disaster. The universe just doesn’t want to cut them a break.

“We helped a lost girl find her family,” Jim says, as if he knows what Leonard is thinking. “I’d say that’s a pretty good start to the five year mission.”

“Still, I’ll be glad to leave this place behind,” Leonard says. Jim’s thumb traces circles over his hipbone.

He hears Jim hum in amusement. His eyes are cast down, eyelashes casting shadows across his cheeks. Jim’s hand drifts lower, fingering at the top of Leonard’s underwear.

“Jim, stop,” Leonard says, catching his hand. “Let’s just sleep. We both need the rest.” He inches forward, pressing his lips against Jim’s softly. The kiss is like Jim’s touch, slow and sweet and lingering.

“I missed you,” Jim says. His face is already going slack with sleep. Pretty soon he is snoring lightly again, and Leonard watches him for a moment before drifting off to sleep himself.

It’s hard to imagine how he’ll handle five years of this, but from the way his limbs tangle easily with Jim’s, he thinks he has a pretty good idea.


End file.
